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China - Bodies of 21 Babies Found in China River

I am sorry to have to post this and I'm not certain if it hasn't but this is a horrible story, that absolutley needs some attention. I am speechless ....

Updated March 30, 2010
Bodies of 21 Babies Found in China River

BEIJING -- The bodies of 21 babies, believed dumped by hospitals, have washed ashore on a riverbank in eastern China, state media reported Tuesday.

Video footage showed that the bodies -- stashed in yellow plastic bags, at least one of which was marked "medical waste" -- included some infants several months old. Some wore identification tags with their mothers' names, birth dates, measurements and weights. The official Xinhua News Agency said there were also fetuses among the bodies.

Residents discovered the remains under a bridge in the city of Jining, Shandong province, over the weekend. Tags on the feet of eight of the babies traced them back to a hospital in Jining, according to the People's Daily Web site. Three of them had been admitted earlier to the hospital in critical condition, the report said. It did not say when.

The other 13 bodies were unidentified. The number of girls or boys was not reported.

More girls than boys are aborted in China because of the traditional preference for male offspring, especially in rural areas. Although gender-selection abortions are illegal in China, the practice remains widespread and has led to a skewed sex ratio at birth in China with 119 males born for every 100 females. In industrialized countries, the ratio is 107 to 100

JINAN - The government of east China's Jining City will pay for the disposal of the bodies of babies abandoned by their parents from May 1, according to a regulation published Sunday.

If hospitals cannot find a dead baby's guardian or if the guardian cannot afford the transportation and cremation, the government will pay the fees so that inappropriate disposal of the corpse can be prevented, according to the city regulation.

It is China's first regulation on dealing with the bodies of babies, officials said.

The regulation came after the dumping of 21 baby bodies and fetuses in a river in Jining last week sparked public criticism.

Eight of the 21 bodies had tabs with clinic code numbers attached to their feet. The tabs showed the bodies were from the Affiliated Hospital of Jining Medical University.

Mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun had been sacked by the hospital and detained by police for allegedly reaching verbal agreements with the relatives of the dead babies to dispose of the bodies for a fee, said Gong Zhenhua, a city government spokesman

[B]
Mortuary workers Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun had been sacked by the hospital and detained by police for allegedly reaching verbal agreements with the relatives of the dead babies to dispose of the bodies for a fee, said Gong Zhenhua, a city government spokesman

The Ministry of Health recently issued a notice instructing all medical institutions in China to appropriately dispose of dead fetuses based on relevant laws, the Beijing News reports.

Early on March 29, residents and firemen found 21 fetuses and baby bodies dumped under a bridge crossing the Guangfu River on the outskirts of Jining City in East China's Shandong Province. The Jining Municipal Health Bureau explained that the babies, who had died from abortion or disease, had come from the local hospital and were considered medical waste according to the law

BEIJING — China's top health body said Thursday that health workers who improperly dispose of dead babies will be "severely dealt with" following an investigation into the dumping of several bodies along a river in eastern China.

A scandal erupted last month when the bodies of 21 babies and fetuses -- some with hospital identification tags around their ankles and at least one stuffed in a yellow bag marked "medical waste" -- were found washed ashore on the Guangfu river on the outskirts of Jining city in Shandong province.

The Ministry of Health said on its website that hospitals should dispose of dead babies as they would any other corpse.

"The incident exposed loopholes in the hospital management, created negative social influence and yielded profound lessons," the Ministry of Health report said.

The report said dead babies and fetuses should not be treated as medical waste, but did not give details on how local hospitals normally dispose of medical waste